100 YEARS OF AUTOMATIC WATCHMAKING

On 13 July 1926, the first Fortis Harwood automatic wristwatches began leaving the manufacture. For the first time, a wristwatch no longer depended on daily manual winding. Energy came from the movement of the wearer. A technical idea became a functioning mechanical watch ready for everyday life.

John Harwood saw a weakness in the wristwatch and refused to accept it. His answer changed mechanical watchmaking.

In the early 1920s, British watchmaker John Harwood focused on one of the wristwatch’s fundamental weaknesses: Every mechanical watch had to be wound by hand. Every interaction exposed the movement to dust, moisture and wear. Harwood imagined a different solution. A wristwatch that could wind itself through the natural movement of the wearer.

In 1924, John Harwood patented his self-winding wristwatch system in Switzerland. Technically, the mechanism worked through an oscillating weight that moved back and forth within a limited arc inside the movement. As the wrist moved, the weight transferred energy to the mainspring through a bumper-style winding system. Unlike modern full rotors, Harwood’s mechanism operated within controlled travel limits and struck spring buffers at each end of its movement. The principle was revolutionary: the watch generated its own energy while being worn.

Walter Vogt had a problem. He wanted to build robust, high quality tool watches at a time when reliability was still one of watchmaking’s greatest challenges. Gasket materials were primitive and every manual winding process required pulling out the crown. Each interaction exposed the movement to dust, moisture and dirt, leading to wear, reduced reliability and constant servicing. Walter Vogt immediately understood the significance of Harwood’s invention. Fortis had the manufacturing capability to transform the concept into a wristwatch that could be produced reliably and at scale.

Harwood brought the invention. Fortis brought industrial execution. Together, they laid the foundation for the first serially produced automatic wristwatch.

Fortis had the capability, the infrastructure and the conviction to take Harwood’s invention beyond the patent stage. The company immediately understood that the real challenge was not the idea itself, but turning it into a reliable wristwatch that could be manufactured at scale. That required far more than assembling a movement. The entire construction had to be rethought for everyday use. The oscillating system had to survive constant motion on the wrist. The calibre had to remain protected despite eliminating the traditional winding process. Reliability had to be engineered into every component. Fortis solved these challenges and transformed Harwood’s invention from a concept into the world’s first serially produced automatic wristwatch.

On 13 July 1926, the first Fortis Harwood automatic wristwatches began leaving the manufacture. From that day on, the automatic wristwatch was no longer a future concept. It was on its way to the wrist.

The new watches were unlike anything people had seen before. Most strikingly, there was no crown on the case. At a time when every wristwatch relied on daily manual winding, Fortis removed the component considered essential to mechanical watchmaking. Time-setting was handled through the rotating bezel, while the movement powered itself through the natural motion of the wearer.Over the following years, numerous versions of the Fortis Harwood Automatic were created. Different case shapes, dial designs and configurations followed, but they all shared the same radical idea: no crown. The result was a completely new type of wristwatch. One built around motion instead of manual interaction.

Around 30,000 Harwood automatic watches were produced in the late 1920s. The system proved its relevance quickly and its influence continued far beyond its own time. Automatic winding evolved. Full rotors followed. Efficiency improved. Watchmaking moved forward. The central idea remained. A mechanical watch could draw energy from motion. That principle became one of the foundations of modern horology and continues to define automatic watchmaking today.

In 1956, Rolex published a correction in the London Sunday Express after earlier advertising had created the impression that Rolex had invented the automatic wristwatch. The record was clear. John Harwood had developed the self-winding wristwatch and Fortis had brought it into serial production in 1926. Rolex acknowledged Harwood’s role publicly. In the years that followed, his portrait appeared in Rolex advertisements, placing his name back where it belonged: at the origin of automatic watchmaking.

A rare acknowledgement. A lasting correction.

2026 marks one hundred years since Fortis began delivering the first Harwood automatic wristwatches on 13 July 1926. The Harwood Automatic is widely regarded as the first serially produced automatic wristwatch. Fortis brought John Harwood’s patented concept into industrial reality and helped shape the future of mechanical watchmaking. A century later, Fortis still builds its watches in the same building and in the same room where this chapter began. The atelier has been transformed into a state-of-the-art manufacturing space, equipped for the demands of modern watchmaking while preserving the place where the story started.